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Need a ultra simple dessert that comes together in a matter of minutes and also doubles up as comfort food? This throw-it-together dessert might help: creamy bread pudding with chocolate chips. [Uh, sorry, those don’t look like chocolate chips because in my enthusiasm of getting my hands on a sack of chocolate after over a month, I think I added too many for it to look like chocolate chip pudding. So it’s slices of brioche oozing with melted chocolate in between.]
This bread pudding is super easy, I practically just tossed the ingredients together without really bothering to follow a recipe at it turned out pretty darn well: Soak a day old (or more) bread in the custard mixture, let it absorb it all, then place it in a dish. Stuff chocolate chips or chunks, whatever you prefer, between slices of moist bread. Bake for 15 minutes. And if that’s not enough, pour some chocolate sauce over it.
Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Yield: 2
Ingredients
- 5-6 slices of a day old bread, thickly cut (I used brioche)
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/4th cup full fat cream
- 1 tsp vanilla sugar
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate (I used Callebaut 70% cacao)
Cooking Directions
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
- In a bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, cream and vanilla sugar.
- Dip the slice of bread into this egg mixture leave it in for a few seconds on each side.
- Place the slices of bread vertically in a baking dish (just as you would were you pretending to place it back like a loaf in the pan)
- Next, slip the chocolate chips between the slices of bread. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes.
- Time to eat!
A delicious variation: Use spoonfuls of Nutella in between slices of bread. YUM.
I go through cookie phases. I don’t make them for months at a stretch, but when I do, I can’t seem to stop.
With cookies showing up all over the blogosphere this season, I got sucked into the madness as well. First, it was the walnut-rosemary that sat in a cookie tin on my desk. And now, these chocolate stuffed cookies.
It’s a simple cookie dough that you roll out and then stuff with really good chocolate. Stuff them well. Stuff them so that the cookie dough barely encloses it. And then bake them. A good 9-10 minutes later you’ll have warm, cookies oozing with melted chocolate.
Have them warm, pinching them a bit so that the chocolate squirts out. It’s fun.
What’s your current favorite cookie recipe?
Chocolate Stuffed Cookies
Makes 20 cookies
Ingredients:
75g butter
75g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
120g flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp milk (or just enough to moisten the dough a bit)
Chocolate callets or chopped chocolate for stuffing the cookies
Equipment: Silicone mat (USA | UK)
- Preheat the oven to 170C/350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
- In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until pale and creamy. Add the vanilla extract followed by the egg yolk and continue to beat until light ad fluffy.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa before folding into the butter mixture.
- The dough will be dry and crumbly – it’s supposed to be this way. Add a tablespoon or so of water if you think it’s absolutely necessary.. else wrap the dough in cling film and let it rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Next, roll out the dough and then cut out circles of diameter 1.5 inches. Place the chocolate (as much as you can fit) and gather together the sides to enclose the chocolate.
- Place on the cookie sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes.
- Remove on a cooling rack… eat up. Great dunked in cold milk as well.
A little while ago, I had hot chocolate at the famed Angelina in Paris. It was the most expensive hot chocolate of my life at €7.20. Served in a pitcher with a small pot of whipped cream, the hot chocolate is what dreams are made of.
The hot chocolate at Angelina (L’Africain) is rich and smooth, and what I really appreciated: served at just the right temperature. If it were any thicker, it’d be melted chocolate. The marble topped tables, the Rococo interiors, the immaculately dressed waitresses, the flashlights on every other table (people recording one of their most important days in Paris) make the Angelina experience a memorable one. And while you’re at it, an order of Mont Blanc won’t hurt.
I can’t afford to drink hot chocolate at Angelina everyday, so I began making my version of rich hot chocolate every time the craving stuck (which is often, now that it’s getting cold and grey). It’s thick, dark and wonderfully creamy. Like all things sinful, it’s best to use the richest milk and cream. I even indulged with an inch of vanilla in the milk. Use chocolate that’s upwards of 55%. I didn’t add any sugar, but you might want to sweeten it a bit if you’re using 70% chocolate. The key here is to be liberal with all the ingredients, and then once ready, serve them in the prettiest cups you own.
Thick and Velvety Hot Chocolate Recipe
Prep Time: 2 minutes
Cook Time: 5 minutes
Total Time: 7 minutes
Yield: 2
Ingredients
- 200ml / 1 cup milk
- 100ml / 1/2 cup cream
- 1 inch vanilla, split and scraped (optional)
- 100g the best chocolate you can get 55% upwards (I've used 70% callebaut and 50 something Valrhona)
- whipped cream to serve
Cooking Directions
- Heat the milk and cream together in a pan with the vanilla. Once it comes to a simmer, turn off the heat and cover the pot for the vanilla to infuse into the milk. Let it sit for 20 minutes or so.
- Reheat the milk to bring it back to a simmer. Take it off the heat and whisk in the chocolate and stir until the chocolate has completely melted.
- Pour into cups and serve with whipped cream.
I have three huge bottles of Nutella sitting on my shelf. My mom would be furious if she knew; but then, that’s my excuse for not making unnecessary trips to the supermarket.
After having my fill of Nutella slathered on toast and straight from the jar, I decided I’d bake some of it into a cake. A dense, moist cake that is speckled with tiny bits of roasted hazelnuts. Nutella cake. I used the recipe from How to Be a Domestic Goddess except that I didn’t add any Frangelico – I wish I had some of my hazelnut extract to add to the silky cake batter. Also, what I also did was top the cake with Nutella instead of ganache and sprinkled it with caramelised hazelnuts instead of plain toasted ones. On second thought, I should have added some finely crushed caramelized hazelnuts into the cake batter too.
This is probably the third cake I’ve baked in my new oven, and I’m still getting used to it. Luckily I have an oven thermometer sitting inside all the time so I can calibrate it based on the readings, because for some reason this oven runs way hotter than the indicated temperature. The nifty equipment’s such a saviour. I’m also becoming pretty good at whipping up egg whites to stiff peaks with a giant whisk. Earlier, I never bothered adding salt, but I noticed that the whites get whipped up quicker with a pinch added in. The salt, apparently, acts as a fantastic stabiliser.
All in all, this recipe’s a keeper. (And it’s gluten free!) Do you have any favourite Nutella recipes for me to put my jars to use?
Nutella Cake Recipe
Serves: 8
Adapted from: How to be a Domestic Goddess (USA | UK | India)
Ingredients:
- 6 large eggs, separated
- Pinch of salt
- 125g soft unsalted butter
- 400g Nutella (1 large jar)
- 1 tablespoon Frangelico, rum or water
- 100g toasted hazelnuts, ground
- 100g dark chocolate, melted
- For the icing:
- 4 tbsp Nutella
- caramelised hazelnuts [100g toasted hazelnuts +100g caster sugar]
Equipment: 23cm/9 inch Springform tin, greased and lined with parchment
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and Nutella together, egg yolks and ground toasted hazelnuts.
- Stir in the cooled, melted chocolate, then fold in the egg whites gently, a third at a time.
- Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake’s beginning to come away at the sides, then let cool on a rack.
- For the caramelized hazelnut nuts: Chop the hazelnuts coarsely. In a pan, melt the sugar until it turns amber. Toss the hazelnuts in, making sure they are evenly coasted and then transfer to a silicone baking mat or a lightly oiled baking sheet. Cool. Chop to separate the nuts.
- Spread the top of the cake with Nutella. Scatter the caramelized hazelnuts on top of it.
That’s just fancy talk for rich hazelnut chocolate ganache rolled into a hazelnut sheet cake rich with chocolate and more hazelnuts.
As you’ve probably noticed, there is a lot of chocolate being eaten in the Purple Foodie household. And this time, with a bag of fresh hazelnuts at hand, I had to put together one of the world’s greatest food pairings: chocolate + hazelnut.
I made the hazelnut ganache from scratch – which means I toasted the hazelnuts, ground it to a paste, and then mixed it with dark chocolate and cream. If the cake didn’t bake in 8 minutes, I’m pretty sure I’d have licked the bowl of ganache clean.
If you’re not particularly inclined on making the ganache from scratch, you could make the ganache with Nutella. Will work just as well.
Gianduja Roulade Recipe
Adapted from: Pure Dessert (USA | UK | India)
Equipment: A 12×16 inch or 11×17 inch baking sheets with rimmed edges, or two 9×9 inch baking pans, or jelly roll pans.
Gianduja Ganache
Ingredients
- 4 oz / 100g hazelnuts, toasted
- 4 oz / 100g dark chocolate
- 4 oz / 100g icing sugar
- 8 oz / 200g light cream (I use 25% fat)
Cooking Directions
- Toast the hazelnuts in at 175°C/350°F, until they are fragrant and light brown. Let them cool a little before transferring it to a mixer for grind to a paste starting with half the sugar, and then adding the rest of the sugar until it's a homogenous paste. Transfer this paste to a bowl and then add the chocolate. In a saucepan, bring the cream to a boil and pour it over the chocolate-hazelnut mixture. Stir till all the chocolate has melted and then refrigerate until ready to do.
Hazelnut Cake
Cook Time: 8 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour
Ingredients
- 1.5 oz / 50g hazelnuts, toasted
- 2 tbsp flour
- 6 oz/ 180g dark chocolate
- 4 oz/ 100g butter
- 4 eggs, seperated
- 2/3rd cup / 130g caster sugar
- cocoa powder, for dusting
Cooking Directions
- Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F.
- Pulse the nuts with the flour in a food processor until finely ground. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, melt the chocolate and butter over a pot of simmering water. Once melted, remove from heat and then stir in the egg yolks and half the sugar (1/3rd cup).
- In another bowl whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then slowly add the remaining sugar, and beat until stiff peaks form.
- Fold in about a 1/4th of the whites into the egg mixture. Then scrape all of the egg mixture into the bowl, sprinkle with the flour and hazelnut mixture and fold it in.
- Spread the batter evenly into prepared pans. I preferred making mine into smaller roulades, so I divided the batter into two 9 inch square pans.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.Now, finally when the cake has cooled, invert it on a sheet of foil and then spread it with the gianduja paste. Start rolling it with the help of the foil. There will be cracks, but it gets less severe as it thickens to one cake.
- Refrigerate for a while before slicing, to have neat slices. Dust with cocoa powder to serve.
